


The Survivor's Tale

by Laetitia_Laetitii



Category: Runescape
Genre: Gen, Menaphos, Oneiroinomicon -The Book of Dream-Names, Second Age, The Golden Library of Menaphos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-05
Updated: 2017-07-05
Packaged: 2018-11-23 20:29:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11409636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laetitia_Laetitii/pseuds/Laetitia_Laetitii
Summary: My entry for the Golden Library of Menaphos competition.After Tumeken's Blast devastates the Kharidian Peninsula, a lone survivor recounts his tale in an abandoned Menaphite city.





	The Survivor's Tale

After the explosion came the famine. The crops in the fields withered, the river ran dry, and the fertile soil turned to dust. Tumeken was gone, and with him the land itself had died.

His death accomplished what the Zarosians never achieved throughout the years of war. With the granaries exhausted, our cities collapsed quickly. Ravenous, starving hordes shambled through the country looking for sustenance, but all they found was death in the advancing desert. Disease had no time to spread before they succumbed to thirst and hunger, and soon their bodies littered the roadsides — the high-priest beside the beggar, the master beside his slave, and the hellish black flies feasted on them all.

A few fortunate ones made it to the ships before they sailed. Having not been among them, I returned to my deserted city to wait for death.

Now darkness has fallen on the desolation, and the waning crescent moon leers on the empty streets and abandoned temples. Tenebrous Elid flows sluggishly under the statue-crowned bridges, and from the stream bloated cadavers grin at me as they float by on their way to the sea.

As the thirst grows unbearable, I can hear them draw closer. I am the last living man in this accursed city, but I can hear the marchers, the marchers by another, distant river. The endless throng, the crowd that fills the bridge over the Noumenon; an army thousands strong, whom I too must join on the long walk through the never-ending night.


End file.
